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| The bounty of our CSA, week 3 |
So, we'll start off with Friday's meal! After I got home from picking up the CSA share, Joe helped me wash and store what we got. I'll try and get photos of that process for this Friday's post, because if there's anything we've learned from the CSA it's that storing what you get properly makes all the difference in the world when it comes to longevity. We finished off using the pac choi in Friday's meal . . . yes, the pac choi that we got back all the way in Week 1, and it was just as crisp and lovely as it was when we stored it.
The stars of Friday's meal were the potatoes,
and the pac choi,with a little help from the fresh thyme out in the garden.
We pulled a steak out of the freezer stash (starting to run low on those!) and we put together one of our favorite easy evening meals: Steak with a pan sauce and thyme-roasted potatoes.
The steak was easy enough to handle: rubbing with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper is really all you need to do to good meat. Sometimes we get fancy around here with some of the spice rubs I make, but we kept it simple since Joe was going to be using the fond and drippings from pan-frying the steak to make a reduction sauce (mounted with a little butter).
The potatoes were halved, and then cut into fairly thick horizontal slices. We brushed a half-sheet pan with oil, added the potatoes, and added salt and a combination of fresh and dried thyme.
They went into the oven to roast, and Joe handled the steaks and the pan sauce while I tackled the pac choi.
I chose to go pretty simple for the preparation of the pac choi. I think that the bitterness of hearty greens like kale, spinach or pac choi is a nice complement to the unctuousness of a well-marbled steak. I decided to run fresh ginger and garlic through a garlic press, toss them in our big saucier, saute them until they were fragrant, and then add a little water and the pac choi, trimmed of stems, to wilt. When the greens were wilted and bright green, I pulled them out and we plated.
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| July 1st dinner, steaks with a pan sauce, thyme-roasted potatoes, and wilted pac choi |
This was the first time we've had a 'big hunk of meat' presentation since the experiment began, and it was amazing how special it felt. Back before industrial farming really took off, foods were generally meat-flavoured instead of meat because meat was much more expensive than vegetables. In 1928, the Republican National Committee even used the idea of "a chicken in every pot" to entice voters to vote for Herbert Hoover because having meat consistently was a marker of prosperity. Now everything is on its head, with a hamburger at McDonald's costing less than a dollar, while a head of pac choi at the supermarket (assuming you don't live in an urban poor area and even have a supermarket) is $2.39(at our supermarket), before tax. I'll talk more about the real cost of meat (at least meat that hasn't been tortured) in a later post that I am working up. It will involve some trips out to meat and poultry producers, and there will probably be pictures (though gory ones will be past a jump).
Joe and I have found ourselves eating vegetarian more often than not, accidentally. We'll be halfway through dinner and look at each other and say "Huh. We ate vegetarian again." Hell, we even ate VEGAN last week with the tofu and pac choi stir fry, and we're about as far away from vegans as you get. (You'll get our cheese when you pry it from our cold, dead fingers)
Oh, and about the Thursday Farmer's Market in Manassas? I went out there to scout it and to see if we could fill out our store of aromatics like onions. Thursday is the producer's market (meaning you won't find distributor resales there), and I was more than pleasantly surprised. I hooked up with Jeff Adams, who runs Walnut Hill Farm with his wife, Ginny. I'll be heading out to visit their farm for that 'real cost of meat' post, where they raise heritage breeds of cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats, as well as pastured poultry that is processed on-farm, in the open air. It sounds a lot like Polyface Farm methods, and I'm excited about heading out there. I also bought a pound of ground beef from him to restock a new, more ethical Stash!
Last week's total spent on food:
$30 for the CSA
$5.50 for the ground beef
$2.25 for a bunch of spring onions (not scallions, bigger then pearl onions, smaller than regular onions)
$ 3.00 for 1.25 pounds of purple bell peppers
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$40.75
We'll see what happens when the stash runs out, but I am cautiously optimistic about how this is going!
Oh. I also baked cheesebread on the 1st, ostensibly for lunches and such this week. Sadly, it didn't make it through Monday. Guess I'll have to bake more!
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| There were four loaves this size, two with the fresh basil and oregano you see here, two without. None survived the weekend |
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